- Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried said FTX is not in talks to purchase Robinhood.
- "There are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood," he told media outlets.
- Bankman-Fried already has a 7.6% stake in the trading platform, owning 56.3 million shares.
Robinhood stock fell Tuesday after crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried said FTX wasn't in talks to acquire the online brokerage.
"There are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood," he told Reuters in a statement. "We are excited about Robinhood's business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them."
FTX did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that crypto exchange FTX is deliberating internally on how to buy Robinhood, but added that no formal offer has been made, and there are no official talks.
Robinhood stock was down about 3.5% Tuesday in premarket trading after surging 22% on the Monday report.
Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old founder and CEO of FTX, disclosed a 7.6% personal stake in Robinhood last month, calling its current valuation "cheap."
He acquired about 56.3 million shares, worth about $482 million based on the closing price at the time of Bankman-Fried's purchase.
A potential merger between the two would propel FTX's stock trading aspirations and give the company more scale, as Robinhood holds nearly 23 million accounts.
For the merger to go through, however, it would need to be approved by Robinhood co-founders Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, who control more than 50% of the company's voting power, per filings made with the SEC.
Tenev and Bhatt have sat on a rocky ride since Robinhood went public last year. After the IPO priced at $38 a share, the stock hit a high of $85, but has since plunged about 90%. Robinhood's valuation stands at $7 billion after being valued at $32 billion at its IPO as inflation, rising rates, and poor corporate earnings depress equity markets.
Robinhood is also steeped in about $9.5 billion in debt, against roughly $6.1 billion in cash, the Financial Times' Alphaville reported.
